J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary Ink Emeraude de Chivor (Emerald of Chivor)

J. Herbin has recently released its newest ink in the 1670 Anniversary Ink line-up Emeraude de Chivor, joining Rouge Hematite, Stormy Grey and Bleu Ocean. The reason these inks have been so popular is because they all have some beautiful gold shimmer in them. It’s pretty rare to get gold flakes in fountain pen ink since most ink is dye-based, and often inks with pigment in them can clog your fountain pen, but these J. Herbin formulas flow well and wet and smoothly.

Each of these previous releases had been highly anticipated, and Emeraude de Chivor is no exception. Its arrival to North America has been discussed on forums and pen blogs and Instagram for the last few months, and we’ve been fielding our share of e-mails and questions about when it was going to arrive. I think we’ve received it here in Canada before the US, which is one of the few times us Canadians have had an edge over our friends down south. With our rapidly weakening Canadian dollar and the end of door-to-door mail delivery, we should cherish these moments, friends!  🙂

I had originally thought it was going to arrive early August, so it wasn’t even on my radar to start thinking about it. Then last week, I got an email from our J. Herbin distributor saying, “Hello Mme Chan, your ink is coming.” I love how these guys are always so calm in their emails. It’s like they don’t realize that immediately after seeing the email, I’m going to freak out a bit.

Emeraude de Chivor is a dark, rich teal with gold flecks and red sheen. I call it teal rather than turquoise because I think it leans more towards a warm blue green rather than a sky blue green, but it depends a bit on how wet your pen is (and your computer monitor…). I also referenced this site here, which I’m pretty confident in, because it’s a site about teal vs turquoise for a wedding, and women can get a bit nuts over wedding details. It’s an interesting coincidence that on this website they say teal and gold is a “fab colour combination.”

Here are some shots of the new ink.

I love seeing the gold underneath the ink before the ink has dried!

Of course you’re going to see much more gold in these super wet swabs, dip pens, glass pens, or anything else that puts a lot of ink on the paper versus in writing with a fountain pen, but you’re still definitely going to see some gold, and obviously the wetter or broader the pen, and the less absorbent the paper, the more gold you’re going to see.

This writing sample is done with a Platinum 3776 Music Nib and on Midori MD paper. The Platinum 3776 Music Nib is triple tined and slightly stubby, one of my favourite nibs of all time. I use it for letter-writing, addressing envelopes, and for inks that have qualities that need a wetter nib, such as shading or sheen.

This shot here shows some insane gold reflection and red sheen probably because it’s the first line I wrote with my pen after filling it with the ink, so the nib and feed held much more ink, but also you can capture more sheen if you look at it from an angle across from the light.

I love that even without noticing the gold or sheen, the colour of the ink itself is this beautiful, dark, rich colour. Especially with a fine nib, with the gold or red sheen not as obvious, you might be able to get away with this in a work environment. Plus you’ll notice the sheen and gold more if you look at an angle and in the right light in any case, so maybe no one will even notice 😉

When you’re filling your pen, your best bet is get your pen ready first, piston all the way down and ready to grab, shake the bottle really well to even disperse the gold flecks and then immediately and quickly dunk your nib in to suck up. If you’re too slow, the gold will all settle to the bottom before you get a chance to get any in your pen. When we do ink samples of these 1670 inks, it’s a two person operation, one person shakes and removes the cap between every syringe fill while the other person gets the syringe in and dispenses into the vials.

I’ve found that surprisingly, these inks clean easily out of your pens. There is sometimes some gold sparkle remaining on the feed if you’re just flushing out until the coloured ink (grey, blue, etc.) washes out, which I know sounds contradictory to what I just said about it cleaning easily, but it’s not in a way that’s build-up clogging up your feed like dried ink residue, it’s just the tiny gold flakes, which will continue to come out in the next ink you put in.

That said, if you’re really concerned about an expensive or valuable pen, consider not leaving any of these 1670 inks in your pen for too long, or to really be vigilant in cleaning it out, even using a bit of dish-soap in a cup of warm water. I’m a bit more of a life-on-the-edge, and I don’t mind a bit of gold sparkle in my Ancient Copper or Alt-Goldgrun. In fact, I don’t think there are too many things in life that couldn’t be improved by a bit of gold dust.

I will leave you with a video done by Ed Jelley, one of my favourite pen bloggers.